"The Group" blu-ray

Reading the lower starred reviews proved 2 things. One, people complained about the lack of widescreen or poor workmanship of the means in which the film was crafted for viewing. Two, some people really are not connoisseurs of film.This was a fantastic film that showcased extraordinary talent. Several of the cast went on to have great careers. Overacted? Not even close. Bergen, for instance, played the lesbian without stereotype or regrets. Shirley Knight was wonderful in her portrayal of Polly.Not every character in every film is going to be likable. I couldn't stand Libby. But she played her role wonderfully. These women are more true to how women can be and often are. If you don't think so then you're the one the rest of thr group discusses. 😉 In such a large group of friends you'll have different ends of the spectrum and everything in between. This movie makes no apology sharing that truth.This movie and The Women are early works that dared to let women be women and not cookie cutter versions of what others think they SHOULD be.

I understand that Elizabeth Bishop broke up with Mary McCarthy because she felt that the character of Lakey outed her as a lesbian. I think she should have been proud of the finesse with which Mary treated the subject of lesbianism. That aside this book is a look into the world of the upper middle class during the depression. Mc Carthy is a master of creating characters that you could fill are sitting next to you when you're reading the book. The plot grows effortless from the characters themselves. Mc Carthy is a preeminent proto femminist.

You could easily forget you're supposed to be watching something supposedly in pre-Hitler times, because it's very dated for when it was actually made. Occasional references to Roosevelt seem weird because you think you're watching a 60s movie. Anyway, I feel like I enjoyed this movie just because of all the young stars in it, but the acting was a bit over the top and the quick-changing vignettes due to so many characters leaves you with impressions of social commentary rather than any depth of character, though you actually do get a good bead on each character because they're all pretty shallow and obvious, I guess. For a 2nd watch some day maybe with Valley of the Dolls and Shampoo.

This movie is a character study of a privileged group of women graduating from a tony woman's college in the early 1930's. Some on them have felt the hard times of the depression others are living off the interest of their interest, so even though they are all friends there are many different sides to them. Based on the novel by Mary McCarthy it tries to cover all the aspects that she wrote about. The basic story lines are there but much of McCarthy's nuance cannot be transferred to film. Nevertheless, it is worth seeing even if only for all the new faces of the day including Candace Bergen's movie debut as Elinor Eastlake, the token lesbian as well as Larry Hagman's jerky alcoholic Harald. Sounds soap operatic? It is, but with some style. Not as trashy as films like the Valley of the Dolls or the Best of Everything, it is still a good watch. I gave it five stars because I really like the film, but you judge for yourself.

I watched "The Group" for three reasons: its director, Sidney Lumet, who in his long career scored more hits than misses; its cast, most of them young, who rose to at least semi-stardom; and the high number of five-star ratings by other reviewers.Taking the last first: every review, including this one, tells you as much, maybe more , about the reviewer as it does the thing reviewed.The second: most of the actors in this ensemble piece deliver very good performances. For Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Joanna Pettet, and Hal Holbrook, it was a first film. It was nearly the first for Elizabeth Hartman and Jessica Walter, who, sadly, have just left us at this writing. It's primarily on the basis of their work, along with the cinematography of Boris Kaufmann, that I give this movie three stars. Though young, these people had talent.The third factor: director Sidney Lumet. By the time he made this movie, he had directed eleven others, including some of which any director would be proud ("12 Angry Men" [1957]; "Long Day's Journey Into Night" [1962]; "Fail-Safe" [1964]; "The Pawnbroker" [1965]; and a superb film that should be much better known, "The Hill" [1965, starring Sean Connery]). Lumet said he accepted this assignment on the basis of its script: producer Sidney Buchman's condensation of Mary McCarthy's sprawling novel of 1963. We'll return to Lumet's own evaluation of this movie momentarily.So far, so good. Now for some not-so-good news.The running time for "The Group" is 150 minutes. First you must decide if you wish to dedicate two hours and fifty minutes of your life to this movie. Afterwards I decided that was a mistake. Buchman's script should have condensed McCarthy's novel even more radically. At least three of the story's eight female protagonists are given such slight screen time that they could have been dropped and no one would have been the wiser. The big exception: Candice Bergen's character, "Lakey," who enjoys about fifteen minutes of screen time, is one of the most interesting of the eight characters, and demonstrates that Bergen was bound for better movies.A second problem with this movie, in my view, is its basic premise. How interested are you in how the still wealthy, or upper-middle-class, weathered the Great Depression and the onrushing Second World War? The short answer: in this film, not very well. Blessed with the privileges attending a Vassar-like education, most of the characters in this story are as self-absorbed at the end as at the beginning.A third problem: this film is multiply dated. True, both novel and film were pushing their envelopes' edges with hot mid-twentieth century topics: Communism, mental illness and psychoanalysis, free love, contraception, abortion, spousal abuse, lesbianism. Here the problem is that none of these issues is treated in depth, the way that a director like Otto Preminger would have sunk his teeth into. The reason for that: there isn't the time. The movie attempts too much with too many and is already overlong.A fourth problem: "The Group" ends up being a period piece overlying a period piece that covers yet another period. It's a mid-1960s movie, which hasn't aged especially well, based on a novel (1963) written in the 1950s, about the period spanning 1933–40.Fifth and finally: Lumet's direction. Here I'll quote the director's own clear-eyed assessment in his incisive book, "Making Movies" (1995, pp. 11–12): "Certainly 'The Group' would have benefitted from a lighter comedic feeling in its first twenty-five minutes, so that its deeper seriousness could emerge slowly. One of the book's leading characters … suffered from taking EVERYTHING in life too seriously. The most minor problem would, in her eyes, become a crisis; the most casual remark could change her relationship to another person. [Here Mr Lumet introduces a spoiler I won't reveal.] … This moment [toward the movie's end] needed the kind of comic madness which turns to tragedy that, for example, Robert Altman, is so good at." Lumet sums up "The Group" as undermined by its ponderousness. I think he's exactly right. Watching it is a heavy-footed slog. Had Altman broken through to the big screen from television in 1965, he would have known better what to do with "The Group" by the application of his antic spirit to an ensemble piece dominated by women.And what was novelist Mary McCarthy's reaction to the movie based on her book? "It'll do."

For it's time, this well-acted film exposed the reality of women's lives in the first half of he 20th Century - domestic violence, alcoholism, abortion, adultery, birth control, lesbianism and with a very rare side of bohemianism and left-wing politics in a mainstream film. Excellent performances, fast-paced and engrossing, though can be hard to keep track of all the characters.